Father and Son
by Quaxo
Summary: Rated because of graphic death. Anyway, Mirai Trunks - - up at Kami's Lookout - - alone - - with Vegeta - - thinking 'bout stuff...just read, Trunks-otakus will not be disappointed me thinks!


Disclaimer: One day, Akira Toriyama, DBZ God, called me up and he said, 'Quaxo, write this fic for me, since I want to test it out on American audiences before I try to make a show out of it.' I said, 'Okay'. Did you believe me? If you did, you've passed the baka litmus test. You're a certified baka. *grins* Now, I doubt anybody did, so you're all smart peeps! So you already know I don't own DBZ!  
  
This is set, well, as soon as Piccolo gets his rear inside the time chamber whatever thingy ma-bob after Goku. Basically, for yous cable American Peeps who watch it on Cartoon Network, Wednesday, Nov. 15th's eppie. Please note that I have not been blessed to see 'History of Trunks' feature, because my stores are stupid and don't carry it!  
  
Father and Son,  
by Quaxo  
  
Trunks stared at his father, who was in the process of doing some warm up stretches. They were slow and almost lazy, compared to his father's regular hyper pace. Hyper was a mild word for it. Death March was much more fitting.  
  
His blue eyes watched as his father tested each muscle, seeing how far they'd flex or stretch, before holding it there, waiting for it to warm up.  
  
He turned away, staring at the endless sky that surrounded them. He felt like such a fool, why hadn't he figured out the faults of the second level, it should have been obvious! Even Goku had figured it out, and mother had always hinted that he'd never been too strong in the mental areas. Even Gohan, a kid with less battle expierence than he in this time, had known!   
  
This definately hadn't put a good mark in his father's books, if he even cared at all. He returned his gaze to his father, a little more steel in his aqua eyes. He never imagined his father to be so damn egotistical, to the point of insanity.  
  
His father noticed him, his dark eyes seemingly bottomless as they looked at him warily, before turning away again.  
  
Trunks sighed, and scuffed his feet against the floor, his heart-ached distantly at this rejection, but there was nothing he could do. His mother had been wrong about his father. He didn't care for either of them, judging from the way they fought.  
  
He closed his eyes, his mind instantly recalling, for some reason, the death of his father. He'd been there that day, five years old that day infact, when his father died. He felt his hand begin to tremble at the strength of the half-faded memories, as they slowly began to flicker to life in his mind.  
  
********  
  
iTrunks grinned at his father, who was walking stiffly beside him in the street. He looked uncomfortable in the large group of people that walked back and forth on the sidewalks. His gloved hand gripped his smaller one a little tighter, wary of losing him in the crowd.  
  
Trunks wanted to laugh at that. Nobody would take him away from his father, he was the strongest warrior alive, and protector of Chikyuu, nobody was foolish enough to mess with his papa and expect to either win or live. He needn't have been so edgy. But adults were just funny that way, sort of like how they all got so quiet when Goku was mentioned.  
  
Trunks looked behind him casually, not really knowing why. Behind him were some older kids, a brunette boy and a blonde girl. Both had icy blue eyes. They looked at his father with interest. Probably at his hair, people always noticed his father's hair. The girl spotted him, and smiled prettily and gave a small wave with her fingers. The boy leaned forward to tap his father on the shoulder.  
  
His father turned, his posture strict, as he glared down his nose at the two big kids. He wished his father would be a bit nicer sometimes. That girl looked awfully nice, he didn't need to be nasty to her or her friend.  
  
"What do you want?" His father snapped impatiently. He looked up at his father almost scoldingly, before noting the tenseness his eyes were reflecting. Did his father know something he didn't?  
  
The boy smiled, and pointed the flat of his left hand at a tall building, and fired a blast. Trunks shivered as the building collapsed and people ran screaming. His father fell immediately into fighting stance, pushing Trunks behind him.  
  
"Will you play with us, Vegeta-sama?" Asked the girl, twirling a lock of her hair around her index finger. She sounded so kind -- but it was so wrong! They wanted to fight! His father snarled. The girl fired off another blast using the fingertip of her free hand, blowing up several market stands. Now there was fire, and the stench of death, for the first time, invaded his nose. It was unpleasant and bitter, and he did not like it at all.  
  
"We've been ever so bored with merely destroying little villages, we'd like to try some bigger game now."  
  
His father looked around at the destruction and mayhem surrounding them with almost sightless eyes. Sometimes his father did this if he heard or read something, he tended to work for hours in the gravity room afterwards. Mother had called it 'deja vu', and had explained that his father had done some things in his life, and that sometimes certain things reminded him of the old days before she made him civilized.  
  
The boy sighed. "I guess you're not the man we're looking for, you don't look like you'd be strong enough to fight us anyway..." He said boredly, he and his companion turning their backs on them, walking through the chaos calmly.  
  
Vegeta scowled angrily, partly to the injury to his pride, and another part to the grim reminder of his former life. The endless cowardly purging. The weaklings had the gall to call him weak. He could still hear the screams, smell the blood and death. He'd thought he'd ended part of that life when he was revived back here on Chikyuu. In fact he'd gotten a little more comfortable with living in a peace time. He'd even come to see a little of what Kakarott saw in this dirt-clod planet.  
  
Still, th temptation was there to join these two in their purging, and the mindless adrenaline rush it created. bNO!/b He shook himself internally, he'd made a promise to Kakarott, on his death bed, that as the strongest fighter left on Chikyuu, he would protect it. A promise Saiy-jin to Saiy-jin was never to broken, especially if they were dying. He gave a roar of rage, and attacked.  
  
Trunks watched in awe as his father threw out a flying kick, knocking the boy to the ground. He'd never seen his father move so fast!  
  
"Let's have some fun, Seventeen." the girl grinned. "But we're going to need some more space." The area had long been cleared of people by now, fortunately. She destroyed seveal buildings, leaving rubble and patches of grass and ground exposed.  
  
His father charged up to Super Saiy-jin so rapidly it amost blinded him with the intensity. He gave a fearsome battle cry and kicked the girl in the side. A blow that had most people either on their knees or near death didn't even phase her. She grabbed his foot and swung him to her friend.  
  
His father swung his fists out straight, using the power of the swing to knock the boy in the head. The boy was knocked back a few steps, giving his father enough time to slip out of the girl's grasp. He shot up straight into the air. The two followed after him, the boy giving a 'yahoo!'.  
  
Trunks scowled. It wasn't a fair fight! He powered up to the best of his ability, anger coursing through his veins. His father had just started teaching him ki techniques, and he'd just mastered flying too. He could fight! He would help!  
  
He flew up to his father's side, between the legs of the enemy and let out an equally fierce scream akin to his father's, and fired off two blasts at the boy and girl.  
  
The boy laughed as they both batted the blasts away. "Trying to be like your Daddy, pipsqueak?"  
  
"Brat." His father snapped in that tone that you KNEW he was angry, and not just pretending to be. It was always very quiet, very meanacing, and being punched was better than having to be talked to with it. "Go home, this isn't your fight. Go to your mother, tell her I'll be home soon." His father barked, to Trunks' relief, in his normal voice. Trunks nodded, before lowering himself to the ground. He wouldn't leave his father, however. He might still need his help. He ducked under a cave of cement slabs that looked stable enough that they wouldn't crush them. Anxiously he watched the fight resume. His father went off furiously against the pair, going so fast that they were barely visible.  
  
He could quickly tell, however, that his father wasn't going to win. His stomach knotted painfully. The tow were overpowering him, slowly. Fear was pounding in his heart, as he frantically watched each blow land cruelly against his father's weakening body.  
  
He couldn't help then, if they were defeating his father like his blasts were nothing. He was the defender of Earth, the strongest there was! Until now that is... He prayed to Kami that those two would leave him alone, stop and find something else to interest them.  
  
Vegeta kicked off to the east, trying to get a different angle on these two freaks with known power that he could feel. They caught his arms and threw him to the ground. He shouted as he fell, wildly trying to stop himself, but knowing that he was going too fast to do anything. He landed on the edge of an upright cement wall, then fell to the ground.  
  
Trunks could see the blood leaking down his father's face. His left leg and arm were mangled and the blood was seeping out of the dark blue leotard his father wore. His father groaned in pain, and pushed himself up slowly, only to fall back again.  
  
"Is that all you have for us, Vegeta-sama? We still want to play!" The girl carolled, disappointment evident.  
  
His father grunted, and pulled himself into the air. His hair was starting to flicker a little between blonde and ebony, he was running low on power, soon he wouldn't even stand a chance... Trunks gulped.  
  
"Leave him alone, *please* let them leave him alone...." Trunks prayed.  
  
The pair gripped his father around the arms, the girl taking delight as she squeezed his father's broken arm. They took him high up, and together threw him to the ground.  
  
He hit the ground, blow large cement chunks out of his way. There was a roar of sound as rocks and earth crashed to the ground, but Trunks hear the cracking of a large bone. He hoped it wasn't his father's spine, he wouldn't be able to fight if he couldn't move! Rage was boiling up in him at his inability to help his father, at his helplessness in this whole situation. He stepped out of his hiding place, glaring at the strange beings who were torturing his father. He could feel his father's eyes upon him all of the sudden, causing him to shiver, unnoticible in his trembling fury.  
  
"Let my father be! He didn't do anything to you!" Trunks screamed.  
  
"You're funny, kid, now scram." Snapped the boy. He raised his palm towards his father. "It's been fun Vegeta-sama." He smirked, before letting loose a blast.  
  
"NOOOO-----" His father screamed. Trunks watched with a numb mind and heart as his father tried to scramble away for a few seconds. He covered his eyes instinctively as the blast impacted. He wailed with the shriek of pain that erupted from his father. As soon as the blast faded, he scrabbled to the pit.  
  
His father was still alive, but he looked terrible. His hair was matted and melted, or simply gone. His armor was bubbling and molten, the undersuit burned to his flesh. Blood was flowing freely from his body, the source coming from his abdomen, where the tear in the flesh grew with each breath his father took.  
  
That was not the worst part, the worst was the horrible charred flesh that covered three-fourths of his father's face. Completely black and wrinkled like an over toasted marshmellow. There was only one eye and half of his mouth that was left undamaged by the blast.  
  
He slid down into the pit, sobbing now, to his father's side. Trunks almost couldn't recognize his father anymore. The face that his mother always had secretly described to him as, 'uniquely handsome in his own way,' no longer existed. just charred flesh and the oozing blood and muscles beneath that he could see through the faults of the broken and burned skin.  
  
"Daddy!" He whimpered, sitting beside his father, staring at the one dark eye that was open. He felt a tear slide down his cheek. "Daddy, don't die!"  
  
The good side of his father's mouth slid down ever so slightly, and Trunks was surprised to see a tear slip down from one dark eye. His father never cried, not even when Momma said things that would make him cry if she said them to him.  
  
"Trunks -- love -- you -- Bulm--a--" His father whispered through his lips, unable to open them much. His right hand, bloody and mangled, stroked his cheek slowly. Trunks caught it as it began to fall, and his eyes began to grow distant.   
  
His father convulsed suddenly, blood splattering Trunk's face and clothes. Trunks couldn't see it anything but those distant, and now dead eyes. He trembled, still not letting go of his father's hand. He wasn't gone, he told himself, they would just wish him back with the Dragonballs when they came back, and everything would be fine again in a few months.  
  
"Well, that was fun." The girl said, landing on the edge, staring down at Vegeta contemptously.  
  
"We'll have to find more like him. He was the biggest one, but there are others around, I can feel them." The boy said, smirking.  
  
"Pity he died so soon... he was fun."  
  
Trunks felt the barrier of denial that he'd put up shatter at the sounds of those awful, cold voices. He screamed in anger and pain, and stood, glaring at them.  
  
"I'll kill you!" Trunks shrieked, and dove at the boy, only to be batted away carelessly. He rolled head over heels until slamming into a freestanding wall. He immediately was up on his feet, his passion for the blood of these beings to be spilt only increasing.  
  
"Listen, kid, run along home. You're no match for us." The girl said, cocking one shapely eyebrow at him mockingly.  
  
"I'll kill you someday, and I'll hang you from the highest point in West City so all can see your dead and rotting corpses. You'll pay for what you've done to my father!"  
  
"Actually, we weren't even after your father." The boy sneered. "We were going to hold you for ransom against your mother. We don't know much about money, but those who have a lot of it, have fun, and we want to have fun. We wouldn't even given your father a second glance if we hadn't spotted you first. Don't worry though, we've found a much better game to play now."  
  
"That look of fear on your father's face as the blast hit him was priceless!" The girl smiled.  
  
Trunks gulped. "I will avenge my father." He said in a dangerous voice, low and similar to his father's, eerie on such a young boy.  
  
"Whatever, we're androids, unstoppable. You're nothing. Now Eighteen, I think we should go find out where all these people are hiding." the boy said, jumping back into the air.  
  
"Right, Seventeen." The girl agreed, and joined him, speeding off into the distance.  
  
Trunks stood, his gaze rooted to the ravaged half of the city infront of him. His father had died because they were looking for him. It was his fault his father died. He felt the tears renew. He flew off to his home, pressing his tears down firmly, like his father would have wanted.  
  
He was at the door when he panicked. What would his Mom say? He shivered, more of what would she do? She'd hate him forever if she found out what he'd done! She'd throw him out of the house to live alone. Even Mister Piccolo, who didn't even like his father would probably hate him. He'd killed their guardian, and now they were defenseless against these satanic androids.  
  
He wailed and fell to his knees on the doorstep, unable to hold in the horror and agony any longer. He would have to run away, he could never admit what he'd done!  
  
The door opened and his mother stood looking down at him with alarm. Her gaze, wide with alarm and sudden anger, choked his tears and sobs for only a second before the dams burst again.  
  
His mother pulled him into a hug, one he didn't deserve and tried to escape from, but she wouldn't let him. She kissed his head, his hair speckled with his father's blood. She put a finger gently over his mouth, quieting him slowly as she rubbed his back.  
  
"Where's your father, Trunks? Did he do this to you?" She said icily, looking up in search of his father. He trembled. "Vegeta, you bastard, I told you not to train him so hard, he's not old enough yet!" She growled. Trunks looked up at his mother's face, she'd hate him, she'd hate him if she knew. She'd look exactly like she did when she was angry at his father, only worse, ten times maybe even a trillion times worse. She'd cry as she screamed, like she sometimes did, and throw things, and hit him.  
  
"I'm so sorry!" He cried, grabbing her into a tight hug. He didn't want her to be angry, and maybe if he appologized now she'd been nice and just let him live here, and maybe feed him once and awhile.  
  
"Trunks!" His mother yelped, surprised. "Trunks... baby, what happened?" She cooed.  
  
"I -- I killed him, Momma! I killed Daddy!" He wailed. "These two androids started a fight with dad, and they killed him, and they wouldn't leave him alone, even when I said 'please'! I went down, and he said he loved me, and you. Then I screamed at the andriods, but they just blew me off, and they said that I'd killed him, because they wanted me, but they decided to have fun with Daddy, and I'm so sorry!" Trunks bawled, his words coming out in rapid bursts that were nearly unintelligible. "You can hate me, yell at me, hit me, anything, just don't throw me out there alone to those androids! Please!"  
  
Bulma gripped her son to her chest, before slowly trying to attempt to pick him and carry him inside. Grief was knocking, but she was going to let it hang itself, she had to to get Trunks settled as best as possible before she could be allowed to grieve.  
  
"You're not going anywhere, baby. I love you, and I'll always love you. You're not responsible for anything those andriods did, you didn't kill your father, understand?" She said sitting on the couch, and rocking him to sleep as he cried into her chest.  
  
Vegeta was gone, and there was a very powerful threat roaming the streets. Vegeta was gone, she couldn't believe it. She closed her eyes, and held Trunks closer, as he ran out of tears and fell into an exhausted sleep..../i  
  
********  
  
Vegeta stared at Trunks, his hands on his knees, as he stretched the hip joints. He needed to talk to that boy, and no matter how he'd tried to avoid it. Ignoring all those wistful and hopeful glances that the boy gave him when he thought he wasn't looking or paying attention. He got the feeling he wasn't going to stop it either until he did talk to him.  
  
There were three things that Vegeta was willing to admit, if asked, that he was not good at: emotions besides varying levels of anger, conveying those said emotions, and talking to others. Fortunately, nobody asked what his weaknesses' were. He sighed, and stood. He walked over to the boy, and stared at him appraisingly, cocking his head to the left slightly. The brat really did look like him, he couldn't tell with the infant version of this young man. Albeit he and Bulma were going through what would be called the Chikyuu-jin fools called a 'phase', which meant they didn't see each other more than they had to.  
  
Trunks was to say the least startled by his father's sudden interest in him. He met those dark eyes with his own ice blue ones.  
  
"You want to spar?" Vegeta asked, kicking himself internally for wimping out, but then excusing it as an ice-breaker. He'd have to start the conversation somehow.  
  
"Why?" Trunks said, looking at the floor. "I'm nothing but a baka when it comes to fighting."  
  
"While Kakarott's little idea was glaringly obvious." He took a deep breath, this was going to be hard. He looked around for any other witnesses. He spotted Mr. Popo and glared, until the freak got the idea and left. He coughed. "I didn't think of it either." He muttered.  
  
Trunks looked up and stared at his father in shock. He'd just -- he'd just admitted he was wrong! Well, sort of anyway... He felt a smile twitch up on his face, before he supressed it.  
  
"So, do you want to spar?" Vegeta snapped, irritated by the step out of character.  
  
Trunks didn't hide his eager grin this time. "Yeah." 


End file.
